Help w/ home networking printer

[DaveC426913]

I want my laptop to be able to communicate directly with my printer.

OK, first let's back up. I'm running XP Home on my two home systems - laptop and desktop. They are both directly connected to the internet through the wireless access point / router. Because of this, as I understand it, my two computers cannot both see each other - this is forbidden by XP Home. I can only configure them to see each other if I set up one as a server and route the other through it.

Right?

Anyway, I want my laptop to be able to communicate directly with the printer (Since I cannot network it, since my laptop cannot see my desktop on the network.)

I bought a print server, not realizing I would need a wireless print server, so now I've got one of those too. But if I hook up the wireless print server, my desktop can't connect to the printer. I'm $240 in the hole on this, and I still can't print from my laptop.

Can anyone advise me on how to hook this whole thing up?

See attached diagram of my setup.

 

[imabug]

I want my laptop to be able to communicate directly with my printer.

OK, first let's back up. I'm running XP Home on my two home systems - laptop and desktop. They are both directly connected to the internet through the wireless access point / router. Because of this, as I understand it, my two computers cannot both see each other - this is forbidden by XP Home. I can only configure them to see each other if I set up one as a server and route the other through it.

Right?

No.

if your AP/router has DHCP enabled, and your computers get IP addresses from it, they should be able to see each other without any problems. If file and print sharing are enabled on your computers, you should be able to share files between the two. I do it with mine all the time (1 XP Home, 1 XP Pro). I even have Apache and MySQL running on my desktop that I can access from my laptop.

Check the Windows firewall and make sure it's set up to allow file and printer sharing (Control Panel/Windows Firewall/Exceptions) to pass through.

Anyway, I want my laptop to be able to communicate directly with the printer (Since I cannot network it, since my laptop cannot see my desktop on the network.)

I bought a print server, not realizing I would need a wireless print server, so now I've got one of those too. But if I hook up the wireless print server, my desktop can't connect to the printer. I'm $240 in the hole on this, and I still can't print from my laptop.

Can anyone advise me on how to hook this whole thing up?

In my printer setup, the printer is connected to my desktop via USB and shared as a network printer. I can print to it from my laptop via wireless or wired (plugged into the router), but this requires the desktop to be up and running.

The print server gets set up as another node on the network (config is usually done by accessing the print server via web browser). As long as it's on the same subnet, the other computers should be able to see it as a network printer and connect to it.

Have you checked the printer compatibility chart for your print server? I've read that many print servers only support a limited number of printers

 

[DaveC426913]

No.

if your AP/router has DHCP enabled, and your computers get IP addresses from it, they should be able to see each other without any problems.

Someone else mentioned this a long time ago, and I think I tried it and failed.